Why HTML5 Media is not Enough
ofmlabs.org
ofmlabs.org
"To make it work in both Chrome and Firefox, we had to use sink.js, to abstract the differences between the audio APIs."
But isn't that exactly what Flash is? Yes sink.js would be an open solution but it would be an open solution based on proprietary APIs built into the browser (which themselves are open source but which can't be changed without approval of their governing bodies making them not that much different than Flash and its product teams)
So really we've traded Flash's native audio processing for a JavaScript solution using a Web API which in turn uses native APIs.
It seems like it would be more productive to force the browsers to develop one common API
In the long term, we have been participating in the W3C Audio WG, and discussing with various folks at Google and Mozilla, to try and understand where the debate is going. Robert O'Callahan's MediaStream API seems the most promising so far.
We are not advocating the use of sink.js as a long term solution!
If you think about it that's exactly what happened with IE circa Version 5. The one good thing IE did was make it possible to develop for one browser. What the industry should have done then was what they're doing with HTML5 now. Define a standard so other competitors could enter the market without creating fragmentation. But that's not what happened and now everyone has to write for 3 browsers (if not more thanks to IE7,8,and 9)
Same with sink.js. For all the bad in Flash almost everyone has it and it's a consistent thing you can write to. If people use sink.js now and don't pay attention to the fragmented APIs underneath we'll end up having to write to 3 different APIs down the line.
So again I'm not against sink.js. I'm just saying people using it need to realize exactly what you said and pressure browsers for a common API in the long run.
Roc says he is nearly done with MediaStreams and if that looks good to enough people on the standards bodies, or really among the browser implementors, then it'll go forward.
JS and the various browser APIs for media come with the browser. Flash doesn't necessarily. You can count on Chrome and Firefox having a media API, but not Flash.
I get where you're going, but this conversation always gets dicey. People want Flash to die, so they sit around the campfire dreaming about why it is bad, but fail to see why it has succeeded thus far.
If we really want Flash to die, we should be concentrating on advancing the standard (or abandon the slow-moving committees involved).
Instead, this rhetoric of how Flash performs, or its inherit proprietary format gets brought up. Over and over. Ad nauseum.
And yet Flash – today – outperforms the alternatives in almost every realm of multimedia. Audio API, Camera support, 3D/vector drawing, video decoding, licensing, streaming.
Drama and vilification won't change the fact that I still can't allow a user to upload a video with a webcam using standard web technologies – probably not until 2020 (or whatever other gratuitously pushed off date it may be). I still can't reliably build a highly interactive, full-width experience without the browser having a fit.
This is the reality.
The reason that we complain about performance, and the proprietary format, is just because that are the main problems with it.
Building without flash is not for everyone, but if you want to support Mobile Safari, or for all the other people without access to flash, you need a javascript solution to the problem.
Have faith, even IE will be able to support rich multimedia applications in the future, or it will become irrelevant.
That future is starting to become available now in Firefox, Safari and Chrome.
Viewing the source has been fundamental to the evolution of the web and it will be fundamental going forward - with Flash you can't do it. Not to mention that Flash's sand-boxed implementation doesn't play nicely with other HTML elements. (Try manipulating Flash video with Canvas).
But what the author is really talking about is changing the process of establishing standards - bottom up rather than top down. Give us, the developers the basic building blocks and we will build the rest. It should become obvious then what to implement as a standard, if anything.
I recently read Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters and although I certainly don't agree with all he says, one paragraph stood out:
"Let yourself be second-guessed. When you make any tool, people use it in ways you didn't intend, and this is especially true of a highly articulated tool like a programming language. Many a hacker will want to tweak your semantic model in a way that you never imagined. I say let them. Give the programmer access to as much internal stuff as you can."
My point isn't that HTML5 sucks, it's that people see it as better than Flash – but it isn't, sadly. That isn't an evangelistic statement, it is a factual one. To push forward, we can't be ignorant. We (as a community) have to look at what Flash does and take it for HTML5 and then come back to the table at least as often as Adobe. Otherwise, Flash will always be better.
[Edit: guessing, not second-guessing]
The developer community, especially with open source as practiced on github.com, is much better able to path-find better high-level models and APIs. Committees and individual browser vendors are less likely to find the right designs and get them codified as well or as quickly.
This is not inevitable. You could have a righteous hacker/designer at a browser company, whose API and implementation are so winning they sweep all before them. Great if this happens, but it's rare in my experience.
Thus the apparent paradox of low-level APIs and increasingly very fast JS engines enabling faster and better hacker-community-based de-facto standardization than even the modern browser vendors can achieve on average. Then the standards bodies ideally roll up de-jure standards based on uncontested winning designs.
We're in the midst of this, so it's hard to see it in full. It's also slower than some people want, but Flash was not built in a day, or a year, either.
Browser vendor "defection" (failure to cooperate in standards bodies on consensus standardization) is an ongoing threat. Competition as browsers merge with mobile and desktop/tablet OS front-sides (home screens) and app platforms is of course still required to keep standards bodies functional.
<input type="file" device="camera" accept="video/mpeg"/>
It does not out perform chrome's webgl, audio API, video decoding support, except in the cross platform support it offers.
The only benefit it has is that it Is common, but there can be version differences on feature support.